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Inspecting HTML elements that disappear on blur
Web accessibility is mostly about HTML, I reckon. Tons of the bugs you work on end up being about adding or removing some attribute from an element. So the inspect element tool is a really important part of the toolkit. And most of the time you don’t even have to think about it: just ⌘⇧C, click on the element you’re curious about, and you’re in business.
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Testing in JAWS on a Mac
A tricky-looking screen reader bug in Forgejo inspired me to spin up a JAWS testing environment on my Mac.
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Do you really need those line-clamps and nowraps?
After getting my first Forgejo PR merged today I was struck by the realisation that I finally have a linkable public example of a type of accessibility bugfix that’s been a recurring thing for years across basically every site and app I’ve ever worked on. So I can finally get this off my chest. Everyone’s CSS is full of line-clamps and nowraps that serve little to no practical purpose, and prevent visually impaired users from accessing content.
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Assigned Mail At Birth
A mailwoman in the US was receiving orthopedic treatment for issues relating to the physical demands of her job. There’s a lot of lifting, carrying, and walking involved in delivering mail, which can lead to pain and inflammation. One day, when checking her medical documentation, she noticed the orthopedist had suddenly and incorrectly reregistered her as a transgender person.
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Oblong of Dreams
I first discovered Half Man Half Biscuit while living in Bristol and working on the music search UI at MixRadio. You type a lot of test search queries when you’re building a search form. It inevitably becomes swear words, which is how I stumbled on National Shite Day.
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Golang LSP in Helix on macOS
Since getting my Forgejo dev environment running I’ve begun poking around the issue backlog and learning my way around the code, looking for the stepping stones to becoming a contributor. One important early milestone was to get the Golang LSP running in Helix.
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Restoring an old 80's boombox
We picked up this gorgeous Philips D8569 boombox from 1982 at a second-hand place recently.
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Running a Forgejo dev environment
Been wanting to get started making code contributions to Codeberg for the longest time. Finally got around to setting up a local development environment. Here’s my notes!
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The software job market is going to split in two
Found myself in Backagården once again this weekend, building software for the international left. This has been a bit of a happy place for me for some time now. This weekend bought a surprise happiness bonus, when I realised how much fun I was having coding without access to my employer-provided Opus 4.5 subscription.
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Our NES needed a new 72 pin connector
Although thoroughly cleaning our new NES the other day was enough to get it booting Super Mario Bros, it wasn’t reliable enough. On a bad day it could take five minutes of fiddling with the position of the cartridge and resetting the console to get the game running.
Henry Catalini Smith
Software engineer based in Malmö, Sweden.
